The Hospital Room

*Note* This is called a "meditative vision" poem, one that I failed miserably at, in my opinion. You're supposed to have some sort of revelation and a vision in the poem: think Coleridge and Wordsworth, I think, only they did it better.


The Hospital Room

The doctor’s office was cold,
just as I knew it would be.
I hate it: the hard examination table,
the way the pearl-white paper
crinkles as I shift.
The sanitary smell, the fear
in my veins.

He charges with the needle
like a murderous bayonet:
my dread rests in its tip.
I feel it enter my arm,
piercing muscle—
then it all goes dark.

The hospital has always been
my Hell—the needles,
the blood, the morphine
they gave my father to stop
what he was feeling. It filled
him like a cancer
that tore down the unstoppable
man I never had a chance to love.

I saw the soft-square room
where he languished in front of my eyes,
but it was me in the bed,
with spidery tubes emerging
from my arms.
Needles were useless and pain
still pressed on—I’d never see
my childrens’ lives unfold.
The doctors were wrong,
they were wrong—

Then, the acrid scent of smelling salts,
that room where a sickly pallor
of the walls matches my skin.
The doctor drills my head
full of concerned questions—
Can you breathe okay?
Can you see my face?—
but I am fine,
except for the wound
from silver needle in my arm,
and the leftover scars
from his hospital room.